


a finite resource

by jessequicksters



Series: golden ages [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Civil War Fix-It, Developing Relationship, Fix-It, M/M, POV Tony Stark, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-16 14:44:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18693607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessequicksters/pseuds/jessequicksters
Summary: It's difficult to fall in love with someone who's often standing on the opposite side of a moral debate. Steve and Tony talk about their differences endlessly: the good, the bad, the ugly, and somewhere in the middle of trying to break through one another's idealistic barriers, they start seeing each other for who they are and what they can be together.(a fic about Steve and Tony throughout the ages, with a focus on expanding on their conversations during crucial moments in their timeline: Age of Ultron, Civil War, Infinity War and briefly touching upon Endgame.)





	a finite resource

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is kind of a culmination of my stevetony journey throughout the years, from movies to fic to fandom, everyone's grown so much and this is just an ode to how much love and joy they've brought me over these past 7 years <3

It hits Tony like a bullet train straight to the face, when Steve’s laughing at a joke Tony made that could’ve only been described as unforgivably dreadful, that they’ve been gazing into other’s eyes for the past twenty minutes.

He realizes the loss, because the minute Steve’s eyes crinkle shut into laughter and tears away from Tony’s sight while his cheeks are turning red, Tony misses it.

“I’m sorry, sorry—Tony, please don’t say that around anyone else but me.” He’s half wheezing in a tiny voice, and to be perfectly honest, this is doing wonders for Tony’s ego, so he’d very much like for him to continue.

But he also wants Steve to look at him again. Steve, whose attention he so desperately tried to fight for the minute they met; Steve, who he thought would never see past the man behind the mask; Steve, who’s now starting to see him, it seems.

Tony purses his lips and props his chin up with his elbow on the table, basking in the moment. He doesn’t even know what’s suddenly happened between the two of them, but it started when Steve said something nice to him on a mission, and Tony saw that as permission to say something nice back, and now they’ve just been saying nice things to each other, freely and often.

It’s been a while since the battle of New York and sure, Steve’s still the Captain, but Tony’s somehow been thrust into this co-leadership role as well. He tried to ignore it when Fury was the one pushing for it, but then his teammates started asking him things after missions—like whether or not there was anything else they could’ve done better, or they’d ask for upgrades on their gear, or sometimes they’d even just ask him how he is? Steve starts doing it a fair amount too, checking up on him after missions, and tells Tony it’s out of concern about the splatter of bruises he wears over the canvas of his body.

Even by the time he gets better, though, Steve still shows up on his door with some files for them to look over together. So here they are, six hours into ‘work’ and they’ve been doing, what exactly, for the past forty minutes? Tony tries not to notice the way Steve’s smiling at the ground when he stretches against the table, arm muscles punishingly strong as he tucks his head in between them and looks down.

“I don’t usually make promises I don’t intend to keep, but if you’re asking nicely, I might consider it.” Tony nudges the bowl of popcorn chicken over to Steve, who manages to pull himself together in time to politely decline.

“Oh, no thank you,” Steve says, gesturing to his full stomach after a whole day of eating takeout. “Anyway, we really should get back to work.”

“Work. Right,” Tony says, settling back down on the sofa where they left their files on display. He feels Steve’s eyes following him, but doesn’t turn around to look.

When Steve sits back down on the sofa in front of him, Tony sees Captain America again. It’s wild, really, the way he flips it on and off like a switch.

“Okay, so where were we?” Steve asks.

“Maximoff twins,” Tony pulls up the files in the air. “Intel shows they’re in Sokovia. We don’t know much about them: deceased mother, long-lost father. SHIELD’s been keeping tabs on them for a while but it doesn’t detail if they’re in any type of danger at the moment.”

“I think the sooner we get them out, the better.”

“We don’t know them,” Tony clucks. “You think SHIELD is going to give us clearance for this type of extraction? They didn’t exactly hand this information over to us, we’ve just been digging around more than they know.”

“All the more reason for us to make a decision, if they’re not planning to,” Steve replies, in a voice that isn’t taking any questions.

Tony sighs, fingers drumming on the table. “We’ve only just started this… team, they’ve put us in. We barely know what _we’re_ doing. I say we get ourselves in order first.”

“We can’t always wait around for the perfect moment, Tony. We’ve been given a chance to do good, to help people like us.”

“Exiles targeted for recruitment by the Bureau of alien hunters?”

“Vulnerable people, who might not get a chance to do something with their lives if they never find a family. Sure, Fury dragged me out of the ice while I was dreaming of the Mets winning seven straight championships and took you out of your clearly very busy life—” Steve says with such a straight face Tony can’t tell if that was the slyest of jabs, “but don’t you think it was worth it? To be able to do what we did?”

Tony looks at Steve’s eyes again, at last, and it’s really hard not to see the earnest emotion behind it. Why was it so hard to do that before? Why was Steve so hell-bent on giving him the brute end of the whole Captain America shtick when they first met? Sure, Tony was also kind of an asshat, but that was because Steve was an even bigger asshat first.

On second thought, point taken.

“Okay, fine. We’ll open up the question to the table in the next team meeting. I say no more than two a year, though. You may be used to co-ordinating an entire army unit, but I need most of my attention focused on solving what’s usually the ticking time bomb that every bad guy who’s faced us so far seems to bring. What else we got?”

“What about the wizard living next door just down on Bleecker Street?”

“Hard pass,” Tony scoffs. Steve laughs again, quickly conceding as he throwing his hands up in a soft defeat this time. If only it stayed this easy between them over the years.

 

-

 

Everything fell apart when they lost Pietro. Tony, who never wanted to be a soldier and never wanted to become one, was finally, starting to feel like one after everything. He takes it out on Steve, who’s probably seen this type of lashing out before—it’s the only reason why he’s handling it incredibly well—and who probably already has some old recycled speech from the 40’s about how we just lose men sometimes, it’s part of the job. We save people in order to kill others. Or was it, we kill people in order to save others? Maybe it was Tony’s fault; maybe they needed more manpower for the job. He wants to kick himself, _get real Stark,_ what’s six Avengers and an unstable teenage girl going to do in the face of a bigger catastrophe?

They couldn’t even handle Ultron without destroying an entire city to pieces. They couldn’t even save one of their own, so what was the point of bringing people into the team when it was as good as signing a death contract for them?

“Are you done?” Steve says softly from beside him on the sofa. They’re at the penthouse again, where they usually do their work, except Steve is sitting much more closely than he usually does and holds his gaze at Tony longer than most nights. Tony feels like a porcelain doll about to meet the ground, which is Steve, which is not helping his current situation at all.

“No,” Tony says, firm. “We need to do better, Steve. We can’t—we need to try again.”

Steve sighs deeply. “I think you need time to—”

“That’s exactly what we _don’t_ have, Steve! Don’t you get it? It’s what none of us, not you, or me, or anyone on _Earth_ has. We’re the only ones who knows what’s coming and you want to sit back and wait?”

“We don’t have confirmation of anything yet, Tony.”

“But I do. I’ve stared at it right in the face when I flew that nuke out of New York. It’s black and it’s empty with stars that may signal life but all I saw was death and we’re right in its path. Living our days like we’ve got _time_ to spare, like _time_ is going to help us when the next big thing comes into our orbit! My first suit of armor around the world had cracks in them, fine. It was a failed prototype. Help me build something better, something stronger.”

“I’m not the scientist you are, Tony,” Steve says, sounding genuinely sad, like he’s trying to meet Tony halfway, somewhere, but he’s still lost.

“You care about the world, I’m assuming? And your whole, ‘I can do this all day’ shtick, that’s real? You’re Captain America, you’re not supposed to give up—”

“—I’m not _giving up_ ,” Steve sounds exasperated now.

“Well, that’s what it sounds like when you’re just sitting there with no solutions of your own.”

Neither of them are looking at each other. They’re just sitting on the sofa, knees only just touching with their elbows rested on their thighs. Tony’s hands are ceaselessly moving, fingers grasping for some sort of stability but he can’t find it, his brain is going at a hundred miles an hour and it feels like it’s going to crash.

But then Steve rests both his hands over his and every movement stops.

Steve’s hands are big and steady. They’re heavy, like a paperweight designed to stop his mind from being whisked away in the winds of anxiety and stress. They’re so warm and so _good;_ Tony’s fingers immediately slide out to grip them tightly. He needs this, needs the type of physical stability Steve is offering, even though he doesn’t completely understand it, or why—why is he offering this to him?

Tony manages a brief glance at Steve’s face for any signs of meaning, but there is none. There is only the look of a man trained to handle situations like this, professionally. There is only the look of someone who wants Tony to stop wrestling with his own thoughts alone, perhaps, this is a way for Steve saying that he’s in it with him, despite not agreeing to his methods, or any of what he’s saying, but the point is that he’s here.

“I need to think about this some more,” Tony says.

He feels Steve’s hand twitch ever so slightly. “Which part?”

Tony’s tempted to say something, anything, to imply that what he’s holding in his hands is something that he _wants,_ in some way or form. But he can’t, he doesn’t know how to ask for things from Steve. Remnants of pride, perhaps, but even on missions whenever Tony decides to do something for himself, it’s never been about asking.

But this isn’t something he can get away with, not without asking.

“What do you need to think about, Tony?” Steve asks again. Steve doesn’t usually ask twice.

Tony bites his lip and considers bolting, but now is maybe a better time than ever if he’s ever going to get the words out.

“What does this mean to you?” Tony asks, trying to soften the impact by concealing it with a convoluted explanation after, “I mean, you’ve heard me go on and on about what I want out of this team. When we first started, I said I’d stay if we’re doing good, and we are, but sometimes I worry that that’s coming at the expense of what’s going on in here—”

Tony briefly taps on his chest, “—which is why, armor has been my go-to solution for most things. You need barriers, between the people who are going to get hurt and the rest of the world out there. It’s not so much about fighting, but about building something that can last. I want to build something that can sustain the way we live going into the future, because at some point, everyone gets tired of fighting, don’t you think?”

“Sure, people can get tired, but someone else is always going to step up. That’s what makes us human, Tony. In all the years and times I’ve lived through, I’ve seen that our strength and will to fight doesn’t go away the older we get. As a collective, we’re always growing, changing, trying to become better than we were before—I see that in you more than anyone else in my life. As for what do I want?” Steve leans back into the couch, shaking his head as he brushes a hand through his hair, pulling his arms back in.

“It’s been so long since I’ve thought about that, to be honest.”

“You’re telling me you haven’t thought about yourself in seventy years?”

“There’s so much to think about!” Steve says, a little defensively, but Tony sees a little smile in there. “I have to think about all these new words people have come up with, new customs, new technology…” Steve gestures at Tony, which actually makes him blush a little. Tony, that is. “It seems a little superficial, or irresponsible to be thinking about what I want when so many other things require my attention.”

“I don’t believe you Cap, you make a whole spiel about humanity and progress and you can’t even take two seconds out of your day to think about where you are now and what this current, present, version of Steve Rogers wants.”

“I thought I’ve always wanted the same thing as everyone, really: family, stability, but the more I think about it the more I’m not sure if that was ever true—the idea of it, sure, but in the context of _my_ life? I think I’m more inclined to find someone, a partner or… someone, who can understand this life I’m living and remind me of what I’m fighting for. Maybe this sounds like a lot, but I need someone to look me in the eye and make me feel like there’s something worth living for. I can lay down my life any day for a good cause and that makes me a good soldier, but if I never hesitate whenever I need to take a nosedive into the Atlantic Ocean what does that make me? Am I just a person fighting for this grand idea of humanity? If I am so ready and willing to risk my life for it every single time, does that mean I ever believed in it? Am I fearless in the face of death because I’ve always been scared of living?”

Tony realizes then and there that maybe he’s been taking up way too much air in these conversations. Shit, okay. One of them needs to push forwards.

“You know it’s okay to feel a little lost,” Tony offers, before the silence engulfs them both. “And it’s good, you know, that you’re thinking about this—if I hadn’t asked, you’d still be pretending that everything’s alright in your life, which it clearly isn’t. And that’s okay, I’ve been there. Still am, in some ways.”

Steve seems to relax at that, nodding gracefully at Tony’s words. “People are counting on us, I just can’t afford not to put up a strong front.”

“And you think I don’t understand that? If anyone’s used to wearing a mask, it’s me. Steve, come on. We’re friends. Promise me you’ll tell me what you need if I can ever give it to you.”

Tony should’ve chosen his words more carefully then, because Steve looks at him with a type of open curiosity that he wasn’t ready to find in his eyes. Tony wishes he could look away or hide, but they’re blue and beautiful and striking and the room is suddenly quieter than it had ever been.

“You’ve given me so much already Tony, I couldn’t possibly ask for more.”

Both of them end the conversation with a smile, but all Tony wants to do is yell until his lungs burst.

 

-

 

When they Avengers win, they win as a team. A victory for one of them is a victory for all of them. But in all these celebrations every single one of them means a lot more to Tony and Steve, and they become more and more meaningful as the years go by. More than anyone else, they’ve had to put in the work to keep the team together, to make sure that they feel like a family. Hell, Tony’s had to fight to change certain habits and patterns he’s developed over the years—just to stay in sync with Steve sometimes, and he often sees Steve working to do the same.

For instance, the fact that Steve used to go absolutely nuts when Tony so much as made an executive decision on anything in a mission. Steve would get mad because Tony wasn’t following orders, Tony would get mad because it was condescending and annoying because it meant Steve didn’t trust him. But the fact is, that’s not what it meant and it took months of yelling down comms and driving their teammates up the wall until they realized that all it took was telling the other that they were feeling hurt by each other’s actions.

Steve never wanted to hurt Tony, and Tony never wanted to hurt Steve. They were much better at protecting each other when they started showing each other that they were capable of being hurt.

And this whole thing, it extended to them supporting each other through a period of crisis when all of SHIELD went up in flames and it was revealed that SHIELD was HYDRA, and that was fucked up. Tony had never seen Steve so broken before, so shaken by the loss of trust he had in everything, including authority, institutions and even the people who were the closest to him.

So when they finally manage to pluck out every last weed of active HYDRA bases and operations from the face of the Earth, it feels like a victory for them. Not just the Avengers, but for Tony, for managing to keep it all together while Steve was all but ready to become a fugitive and singlehandedly take on the world.

Tony hosts a party at the penthouse and everyone seems to be enjoying themselves, except Steve, who’s strolling around like a lost puppy with a drink in his hand. Tony’s had a couple himself, so he’s in a good headspace right now to egg on the man of the hour.

“You know for someone who took out over fifty Nazi camps in the past few months, you don’t look too excited,” Tony says, leaning against the bar as Steve fiddles with the drink in his hand, spinning it on the smooth granite surface of the counter.

“You’re right, I’m not.”

“Care to tell me why?”

“I wouldn’t want to spoil the fun,” Steve smiles weakly, stuffing his hands in his pocket and taking a glimpse of the rest of the room. He does that when he’s scared of people watching him, Tony has noticed.

“You know I can be very versatile with what I consider to be good entertainment,” Tony says, voice dropping low, which earns him a chuckle from Steve.

“Oh, I’m definitely not in the mood for _that_ ,” Steve replies, and ends up tripping over his next words. “I mean, not that I’m not—aw, Tony, now you’re just going to make fun of me for the rest of the week.”

“I am greatly enjoying this and looking forward to the rest of your words, but please continue,” Tony tries, but fails to hide his grin as he watches Steve fumble away. He’s definitely had at least two shots of whatever it is Thor brings them from Asgard.

“Well, as much as I love punching Nazis and whatnot, it kinda feels like I’ve punched away every last bit of my past. I’ve won every fight I started, lost everyone I knew and now… it’s just me. I don’t want to sound ungrateful or anything, I appreciate the party, but now I think it’s really time for me to start asking myself that old question again.”

“Which one?”

“What do I want?” Steve says, eyes still on the ground.

“And your answer’s still the same?” God, it’s been more than a year since that conversation between them. It keeps Tony awake at night more often than he’d care to admit.

“Yeah,” Steve says softly. “Yeah, it is.”

“You’ll find someone,” Tony says quickly. “Don’t worry about it, you’re a catch.”

Steve chuckles a little and nods to himself, before looking back at Tony. “I never asked you the question. What about you?”

“Me? Oh, you know. I want world peace, that’s all.”

“Tony.”

“Okay, okay fine. Serious answer? I want to retire, that was the whole point of what I was trying to do—suit of armor around the world, remember—okay, hey, don’t give me that look again. We agreed to ban discourse at parties!”

“I know, I know. I won’t say anything,” Steve concedes, smiling earnestly. “Go on.”

“Anyway, before I was so rudely interrupted, what was I going to say? Right, all I’ve ever wanted was to go home. Isn’t that why we fight, so we can end the fight, so we can go home? I know you mentioned wanting to find meaning in the fight, but I think everyone could always find a reason to fight for something. That doesn’t matter to me so much, because don’t the bad guys claim to have their own reasons for doing things in their own twisted ways? In the end, it doesn’t matter who’s right, because we’re all paying a certain price and whoever wins is the one who gets to walk away with the least damage. I don’t want to get to a point where we’re walking away with only scraps and are forced to call it a win because hey, we made it, but at what cost?”

Steve looks at him for what seems like a lifetime and Tony feels the weight of his mind pondering his words. Hopefully, they didn’t get lost under the blur of the alcohol, although Tony wouldn’t entire blame him if it did. He’s starting to feel a little tipsier now, too.

“That makes sense,” Steve replies, at last.

“Really? Steve Rogers understands the appeal of retirement? Did all my old-man jokes get under your skin all of a sudden?”

“No, Tony. I get it, wanting to walk away from it all. I never really considered it as an option really, for me, at least. But now that you’ve explained it, you’ve made me see the other side of it, and I do get it. It would be nice to be able to put my shield down one day.”

“Hmm,” Tony hums, as he looks around the room and gathers that everyone’s either occupied, drunk, or a combination of both. His next idea is definitely going to be kind of stupid and Steve is going to laugh at him, but he doesn’t really care.

“Well, if you’re seriously thinking about it, I’ve actually started creating some blueprints and designs for retirement home options for myself.”

“You’re kidding,” Steve says in a tone that’s meant to be dismissive, but Tony notices the way in which his eyes light up.

“I’m not. I’m planning to build a farm.”

“A farm? Tony Stark, do I know you?”

“I’ll show you! Trust me, it’s going to be amazing. Log cabin in the woods, river nearby, it’ll be so peaceful I would be happy to die in my sleep anytime. I’ve got the design in my suite. Kind of went old school and started printing out stuff and drawing by hand again, I guess I started watching you sketch in between missions and I wanted to try my hand at it. It’s probably not as good as your art skills, but I must say—”

Steve takes a step closer towards him until their chests are almost touching, and Tony suddenly finds it hard to breathe. Steve’s head is tilted to the side, soft lips pursed into an amused smile as he raises an eyebrow at him.

“Tony, just show me your dream farm.”

“Yeah, okay. Yeah, fine, I will.”

-

 

“I really like that one,” Steve says, pointing at one of the sketches of Tony’s cabin, finger tapping on the garage in the picture. “Lots of space for you to tinker around in the back. You might even end up on the front cover of Country Living magazine.”

“Might? Honey, I’d get a whole spread featuring me and my farm.”

“With a cowboy hat,” Steve breaks into laughter, clutching his chest, “and—and a photo shoot on a horse.”

Tony tries to fend him off, but starts bursting into laughter as well. They’re sitting next to each other, close to the bedside table, which may just break under the weight of Steve’s hand, gripping the edge of it tight. They finally manage to catch a breath again after a minute or so.

“It’s funny when I think about it, a lot of things have changed in America over the years, but the dream of living in the countryside—that’s somehow still alive,” Steve says, glancing as he absentmindedly shuffles through the pictures in his hands.

“Makes sense, since the world’s getting more complicated. More than ever, I guess, people are trying to retreat into someplace they can feel safe, where they can just strip down the layers of themselves.”

“Are you ever scared about that? What if you don’t like what’s underneath?” Steve asks in a faint voice.

“I’d find a way to live with it, as we all learn to eventually. Why, got any demons you hiding?”

“Just one.”

“Steve,” Tony says, instinctively stretching an arm out to touch his shoulder. Steve immediately looks at him, confused at the sudden contact, and Tony then immediately pulls away.

“I’m—” Steve gets cut off by Tony.

“—I’m sorry,” he finishes.

They look at each other and there’s something in Steve’s eyes that Tony doesn’t see often. It’s guilt. He can recognize it from a mile away in anyone, but this is a very particular brand of it that catches him off guard. Steve tucks away the papers back into the bedside drawer and turns to face Tony.

“I have something I need to tell you,” Steve says. “You won’t like it.”

“What is it,” Tony replies, gears turning in his brain.

“After we wrapped up the HYDRA takedowns, Sharon and Iooked over all of the remaining files from SHIELD on all of their operatives around the world. We wanted to make sure that there were no loose ends and we’ve cut off every last one of their heads. There was one person still at large, who we couldn’t identify until now. We found out it was the Winter Soldier.”

“What does that have anything to do with me?”

Steve drops his gaze, taking a deep breath as if he’s bracing for some sort of impact. Tony’s never seen him look so small before.

“He was the one who killed your parents, Tony.”

Tony freezes. All of a sudden, it’s just him looking into Steve’s eyes, realizing that this is it—this is what’s at his core, it’s staring right back at him and Steve’s been trying so hard to purge it all away.

“I also knew him,” Steve says.

That was not what Tony was expecting. “What?”

“Remember my friend Bucky, who I told you about? Who died on that train—well, turns out he’s not actually dead. They brainwashed him, Tony, tortured him and reprogrammed him to be this—” Tony watches as Steve’s face twists into a grimace, eyes flooding with tears. Steve Rogers has a reservoir of tears too, kept hidden from the rest of the world.

Tony feels numb, if anything else. He feels scared, that his parents’ murderer is running around this very instant. He feels angry, angry that they’ve never caught the guy before because he knew it; he fucking knew that it was no car accident. It’s like he’s been waiting for a pin to drop his entire life and now that it finally has, he’s free of all the uncertainty, the crippling guilt and anxiety over the details leading up to the situation.

But he realizes that he’s not the only one hurting over this.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says in a whimper, and Tony reaches out to hold his hand on the bed. He still refuses to meet Tony’s eyes and is as stoic as ever.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Tony says, voice wavering. “When did you find out?”

“Yesterday. Sharon offered to deliver the footage to you—”

“There’s footage,” Tony cuts in.

“Yes.”

He needs to take a breath, because if he’s not careful, this is going to consume him very, very quickly and he can’t do that, not in front of Steve, not when he’s trying his best to keep it together for Tony. It’s the least they can do for each other. Of all situations that could go out of hand, they can control this one. They can take charge of the narrative that’s been given to them.

He realizes that he’s still holding Steve’s hand and without thinking, stroking the inside of his palm with his thumb. Steve watches with an intense gaze, as his fingers tighten to ever so slightly squeeze Tony’s thumb. Once they’ve locked together, it feels like a statement being underlined. They can’t go back now.

“Does anyone else know about this?”

Steve shakes his head.

“Do we know where Bucky is?”

“We’ve got some idea, but nothing concrete at the moment.”

“I’ll help you find him,” Tony says and is met with a look of apprehension on Steve’s face. “We’ll find him together. I can’t promise that I’ll keep it together in front of the guy, but if he’s your friend and that means something to you—”

He sees the look on Steve’s face when he realizes the reference to their earlier conversation about finding meaning in life.

“I’ll do what I can to do right by him.”

“Tony, I’m really sorry. I know this must be a lot, and you must feel—”

“You don’t know how I’m feeling, Steve. You can’t possibly know.” He flashes him a quick smile, and then glances back at their intertwined hands.

“You’re right, I don’t. Not if you don’t tell me,” Steve says, with a genuine strain in his eyes that’s begging for Tony to notice.

Steve never asks for anything. Steve never tells him what he wants and when he’s asked, pretends he doesn’t know or that what he wants doesn’t exist. Tony understands boundaries more than anyone, but this is as good as an invitation as anything.

He leans forward and tentatively reaches out to touch his chest, following Steve’s eye-line carefully moving with his. He feels it, the heartbeat of a man who was frozen in ice for seventy years and now he feels hot under the touch of his hand, pulse racing like a meteorite burning upon impact in the atmosphere.

Tony knows the feeling all too well.

He meets Steve’s lips in a gentle kiss, and he swears he hears Steve saying his name under his breath, but he doesn’t wait for clarity. Some moments can never be repeated. He brings his hands closer, god he’s needed this, and he’s _wanted_ this for so long. Like Steve, he’s never said it out loud, never even thought about it, but deep down in his subconscious, he knew that every time Steve walked into a room he just wanted to get just a little bit closer to him and carve out more and more space in his world.

Now here he is, hands firmly settled on Steve’s shoulders as Steve wraps his hands around Tony’s waist. He grips his sides, hard, like he’s forgotten how strong he is, fuck. Tony forgets too, sometimes, and as their lips crash together again Tony slides his way onto Steve’s lap, straddling him on the bed as the other man holds him while sitting upright.

Tony’s scared to open his eyes, in all honestly. Kissing Steve feels nice. His mouth is warm and soft and his tongue is pushing against his in all these ways that is definitely going to stop Tony being able to reconcile the idea of Steve being Captain America. Because Captain America can be a lot of things—brave, bold, inspiring, stubborn, frustrating and occasionally a prick, but Steve? Steve is much more elusive than that.

Steve gets angry when Tony doesn’t see eye-to-eye with him on certain things, like these things personally offend him. Steve overthinks things when he thinks people are going to read him the wrong way, or take his words out of context and tries to over-explain himself far too much even when it’s not necessary. Steve laughs at Tony’s jokes when no one else does and tries his best, always, to understand the complicated workings of Tony’s mind. He seems to love learning, loves the process of understanding things he never thought he could.

Steve is a terrible flirt with no sense of awareness regarding people’s attraction towards him, which makes absolutely no sense when he’s kissing Tony like _this._

Tony’s knees are digging deeper into the mattress as he bucks his hips forward, which earns him a soft groan from Steve, who doesn’t, for a moment, stop shoving his tongue down Tony’s throat.

Two can play that game. He’s Tony fucking Stark, after all. He slides his hands up Steve’s back and clutches fistfuls of his hair from behind, which earns him a full body shudder from Steve as he tilts his head back for a brief moment of air.

“Look at you, you’re all red,” Tony says, leaning in to Steve’s face as he drops backwards to his elbows.

“Are we really doing this, now?” Steve asks, as Tony pops the buttons open on his gorgeous ocean blue shirt. His blush really does spread down to his chest and possibly, if Tony’s blessed enough to find out, further down.

“What’s your excuse?”

“For one thing, your party’s still on. Our friends will talk.”

“They’re already talking, they saw us leave.”

“Tony,” Steve says, taking ahold of his arm, forcing him to stop trying to undress him. “I don’t want this to be about… I just don’t think it’s the right moment, that’s all. You’re trying to dissociate, what I just told you about your parents. You need a moment to sit with it, to think about it.”

Steve’s right. Tony stops before he does anything he’s going to regret, and the weight of the revelation starts feeling heavy in his heart again.

“I can stay,” Steve says. “Tonight, if you like. After the party, I’ll stay with you if you need someone. Or if you prefer to be alone, that’s okay too.”

Tony panics, because Steve is offering a lot. He’s said no to what could’ve been easy and simple for the both of them, but he’s putting something else on the table, something that Tony just isn’t ready for.

“I’ll be fine, Steve, don’t worry about it.”

He sees one last smile from him before they head back out again, wordlessly splitting off among their friends for the rest of the night.

 

-

 

They’re in the best place they’ve ever been when the Accords gets dropped on them. Tony gets the invitation General Ross one morning during breakfast, when Steve is making coffee and talking about a dream he had the night before.

“If you ever did run for President, though, I’d definitely vote for you. All those slimy politicians who claim to care about the people of this country—they just piss me off, okay? I know that my title is inherently political, a symbol of America, but at the same time it’s like I don’t even know what America means anymore. Maybe I never did. You know what they say: the hardest battles are those where you’re fighting yourself. It’s easy to rally together and point against a so-called foreign enemy, but it’s much harder to yank the weeds out of the very system that keeps you alive, as corrupt and as ugly as it can get.”

He pours the fresh brew into the two mugs and brings them over to Tony on the high table. “Sorry, rant over. Here, as you like it.”

“We’ve been invited to meet the Secretary General,” Tony says.

Steve brows twist into an immediate knot of resistance. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know, but we’re all invited. All of the Avengers—Rhodey says the US military isn’t directly involved. He doesn’t know what’s going on, either. It’s this afternoon, at three.”

“Gives us a whole day to figure things out. Want me to call Fury and ask?”

“No. Whatever it is they want to tell us, they can tell it to our faces,” Tony says, sipping on the coffee and perking up almost instantly. “Speaking of faces, yours is looking a little worse for wear, Steve Rogers.”

“Didn’t get enough sleep,” Steve says, blushing.

“I keep you up all night, and yet you still manage to dream of me in the Oval Office when you do manage to get some shut-eye?” Tony raises an eyebrow at him, downing the rest of his mug of coffee and watching as Steve folds his arms in his chest and tries to ride out the smug look on Tony’s face.

“Maybe I won’t vote for you, after all.”

“Give me one good reason why.”

Steve leans over across the high table and Tony feels himself wobbling on his stool. Jesus, that’s never going to _not_ get to him, the sheer size of Steve, towering over him like he’s ready to claim him as his own.

To be fair, he’s been doing quite a fair bit of that lately.

“Well, for starters,” Steve says, brushing a finger under Tony’s jaw and smoothing a thumb over his beard, “you’d be spending less time with me.”

“I really never pegged you for the jealous type, Rogers, but these past few months have really proven me wrong. What did I tell you about taking it slow and easy?” Tony brings his hand to his mouth for a kiss, dropping his jaw open and sliding Steve’s index finger onto his tongue.

Steve raises his eyebrows and gives him the most incredulous look. Tony feels like he’s being chastised by Captain America, and he likes it. He likes when Steve talks to him like he’s going to teach him a lesson, and he likes when he ends up actually learning something from him. Steve lets him take so much in bed, lets Tony fill himself up with him and come all over him wherever he wants and he takes it all, like it’s all he wants every second of every day. Whatever Tony wants, Steve’s always ready and willing to give.

Since that first kiss, they’ve been drawing closer to each other than ever before. It wasn’t until they finally recovered Bucky that they were actually able to breathe again. Every kiss wasn’t tainted with a guilty conscience, or a reminder of the past. Sure, it was hard for Tony to accept the fact that his parents were murdered, but it was just as hard for Steve to accept the fact that his friend had been turned into an assassin. Bucky felt like a wedge between the two of them, in a situation that no one had control over and that no one could be faulted for. But when they found him and his memories started to recover, it bought them closer together. Slowly but surely, they reclaimed the narrative of their relationship.

“Tony, you’re anything but slow and easy,” Steve says, pulling his finger out of Tony’s mouth and wiping it on a napkin on the table. “In fact, you’re the total opposite of it.”

“Wanna head back to bed?”

“I can take you right here, Stark.”

“ _Oh_ , god.”

Tony always loses it when Steve uses his Captain voice on him, and Steve _knows it._ They end up wrestling on the living room sofa, with no barriers between their bare bodies and the sprawled out city right in view in front of them in mid-daylight. Even if the windows are tinted, it’s the most open they’ve ever been. _Look at us; look at what we can be._

Steve keeps his movements strong and precise, like every thrust is made with purpose, as Tony’s leg is hooked around the curve of his strong waist, Tony feels the beads of sweat tricking down from his blonde hair—the glaring heat of the sun at midday really did it for them—onto Tony’s face and down his neck.

“Oh, Tony, I’m close,” Steve whimpers, crying into his neck. Tony finished about five minutes earlier. Now, they’re just dripping in sweat all over, from the tip of their hair, down to their chest and the insides of their thighs. Tony feels himself clenching around Steve as he comes, pulsing and hot inside him as his movements start to falter.

It’s amazing how Steve manages to relinquish control around Tony, something that he never thought he’d see. He lets himself because desperate and needing—no, wanting things from him more and more every day. Tony remembers the days when Steve never knew what he wanted, but he sees it now, in the way Steve looks at him in the afterglow of his orgasm, smiling and flushed pink as he plants delicate kisses all around Tony’s collarbone and chest.

They go again and again, as if something’s really taken over them. Must be something in the sunlight today, where they’re both seeing each other for who they are, after years of trying to conceal parts of themselves for one another. They lie awake together and talk, just about their plans for the week. Steve wants to see an art exhibit at the Met. Tony wants to find a engagement gift for Pepper and Happy. Steve offers to go shopping with him.

“We should get ready for the meeting in a minute,” Steve says.

“In a minute, yes.”

A silence hangs in the air as they bask in the comfort of each other’s embrace. Steve is the first one to break it when the minute passes.

“I know we said we’d wait to see where this goes, but I think we’re already there, don’t you think?”

“We are,” Tony replies, not missing a beat. He sees the way Steve smiles at him after, and god, things are just so good between them, it’s hard to imagine just how everything could turn around so quickly in on afternoon.

 

-

 

Every conversation about the Accords turn into a long, painfully slow and corrosive process whereby Steve and Tony start seeing the cracks in their relationship and walk away with a smaller fragment of common ground every time.

It’s the night before the signing deadline. Ross gave them a month to work it out among them. They had a hearing at the UN, meetings with the US government and long discussions among their ever-growing roster of Avengers. To Tony’s surprise, they’ve somehow managed an almost even split between the team as to what they’re going to do. Trying to get everyone to stay together is starting to look like a pipedream, and Tony’s worn-out dry trying to fix the leaks. Everything they’ve built together is going to be washed away as they’re all drowning in their own ideals—ideals, which, Captain America himself exerted a great amount of influence on.

Tony and Steve are the last ones left in the boardroom, as usual. It’s past midnight and everyone’s gone home, presumably to ponder on their final choices. He can only pray that everyone who’s already decided to sign won’t to change their minds come tomorrow morning.

“I still think you’re making a mistake, Tony,” Steve says from across the table, in that condescending tone he uses when he thinks no one else in the room has a clue.

“You think I haven’t been losing sleep over this? Do you not feel the way my body’s been writhing in bed every night, thinking about this, while you’re dozing off to sleep just like that—” he snaps his fingers, “because you’ve already made up your mind before we ever started this discussion, because you can’t comprehend that you may be on the wrong side of the fence for once.”

“Clearly, your stance isn’t indisputable, if half the team agrees with me.”

“They’re rallying behind the idea of you! Don’t you get it? You’re their leader, Steve, _our_ leader. I’m trying to keep the Avengers from breaking apart. You’re willing to give up on what we’ve built, after all we’ve been through.”

“Maybe I’ve influenced some of them to a certain degree, but give them more credit, Tony. They’re individuals who don’t want their freedoms imposed on. I don’t know who you see in me sometimes, I’m really not this person you often think I am. You think I haven’t noticed the way you look at me when you see Captain America? It’s heartbreaking, the way I seem to lose you in an instant. I know we started off on the wrong foot, but don’t act like so much hasn’t changed since then.”

“Now you’re just playing dirty,” Tony scoffs.

“It’s going to get much worse than that if you keep up the attitude.”

“What’s so wrong about fighting to stay together? I thought we—I thought _I_ meant more to you than this. We’re not above the law, Steve, as much as we tend to act like we are. Maybe that was a quality instilled to us by SHIELD, when Fury was on our side giving us the okay for all these international missions, but someone out there was tallying up our sins. We gotta start co-operating with these institutions, it’s how the world works.”

“And who do they answer to? Do you think this type of partnership held HYDRA accountable when they were a part of SHIELD? No, Tony, _we_ did that, because we didn’t have to think about anyone pointing a gun at our heads forcing us to pledge our loyalty to them. Do you think corruption in the government is taken care of just because they have systems of accountability put in place? What’s the point of upholding systems when the people inside are still rotten? Good things don’t come from governing bodies that are claiming to do good, they come from good people, who are already standing up for what they believe in. So when you talk about what we’ve built, with the Avengers, and you tell me that _I’m_ the one betraying that—I can’t understand that, because I believe in us more than anything. You’re the one who seems to have lost faith in what we are.”

Steve doesn’t mince his words whenever he’s trying to get a point across, and honestly, Tony’s thankful for it. Better to lay all the cards on the table, bloody and all, rather than going in blind.

“What if we fail? What if one of us goes rogue? So the world is supposed to just accept it, to just trust us, when we tell them we’re putting the offender on time-out on our home base? We’ve crossed some lines, Steve, you can’t ignore that—and what are you even talking about, about me not believing in us? You’re the one trying to split us apart! You’re trying to tell me that you believe in us, but apparently, it’s not enough to believe that we can work together with the world _and_ keep our integrity.”

“We’re going to lose control of our decisions, you know that.”

“Our strategies were due in for a review anyway, they’ll push us to prioritize. We could solve more problems if we do it together if we remain together when we’re there to face them. It’s not about working for them it’s about working with them, just trust me to—trust me to work through roadblocks when we get to them.”

“People who run these organizations, they have agendas. They’re not obliged to listen to whatever changes we might want to make, because we’d be agreeing to join on their terms, not ours. How are we just going to sign away our lives and our weapons without fully knowing who we’re going to be working for?”

“You didn’t seem to have a problem with that back in 1940. You’re telling me you made the wrong choice then?”

Steve looks at him like he’s impressed at the sheer nerve of it all. Tony’s always had that skill, to blindside Steve when the man thinks he’s got him pinned down.

“If I see a situation pointed south, I can’t ignore it. Sometimes I wish I could.”

“No, you don’t,” Tony sighs and realizes that this is really how the night’s going to end, with the two of them at odds, neither of them budging. Maybe it was always going to come to this with the two of them.

“No, I don’t.”

It’s starting to sink in that this is how it’s going to go tomorrow, with each of them taking half the kids in the divorce, leaving a broken family in which Tony failed to keep together. For all the resentment he held against his father, it finally dawns on him that as long as he’s human, he’s bound to make the same mistakes. Perhaps it was a failure on his part to connect with those who chose to side with Steve, a failure to teach them the values of trust—Iron Man was always the one who always went rogue on missions, made last-minute decisions and diverted from plans whenever there was a better solution. He’s been teaching them these lessons all along, without even realizing.

He can’t fault them for making a choice, as much as it hurts. He just has to make one with Steve, now.

“Spend the last night with me before they start barricading the walls?” Tony asks, as they pick up their jackets and start walking towards the door.

Steve is the first one to walk out, stops midway through the door and gives Tony a weary smile. “If I stay it’ll make it all the more difficult for me to watch you leave in the morning, knowing what you’ll be doing when you walk out that door.”

“Please, Steve. I need you,” Tony tries again, because fuck, what’s it going to take?

“So do I,” Steve replies. “Guess neither of us are getting exactly what we want tonight.”

 

-

 

He doesn’t call, because neither does Steve and if there’s one thing that they share in common is that they’re impossibly stubborn. If Steve says, _call me if you need me_ , Tony’s not going to take the bait, because he doesn’t _need_ Steve, not anymore, not since Steve admitted that that _need_ didn’t mean anything, that it wasn’t a good enough reason for either of them to stay.

But they do text each other quite a bit, for two people who are still trying to put up the pretense that they can live without the other.

It's not much, usually, just short bursts of conversation whenever one of them makes national headlines for doing something impossibly stupid or brave (most of the time, it’s both). It’s Steve’s turn tonight, to send Tony a text.

 

_Nice job with the AIM bombs today._

**Zero civilians hurt with the perimeter protection provided by the military. How about that?**

_Playing nice with the military now? Never thought I’d see the day._

**I trust them as much as I can throw them, but we ask for what we need and Ross gives it to us.**

_Good to know one of us are finally getting their needs met._

Tony laughs into his hand, flopping back down on his chair after spending all day at his workstation installing new upgrades on the suit. Conversations with Steve are hardly ever easy, but even with all the friction between them these days they somehow still manage to end up feeling natural.

 

**You’re not still lonely, are you? Afraid the cure for that kinda thing would be a team, which you seemed to be opposed to, if I remember correctly.**

_I’ve got a team, Tony. You’re just not on it._

**Rude.**

**You better watch that mouth, Cap.**

_You seemed to like my mouth fine when your dick was in it._

**Well, that was a different story…**  
  
**And the only good use of it, imo (in my opinion, in case you didn’t know)**

_Where are you now?_

**Wouldn’t you like to know?**

_I would, that’s why I asked._

**Workshop. Not in the mood for a boring set of 20 questions tonight, Cap.**

**Where are you?**

_Nice try._

Tony smiles, leaning back into his seat as he throws his legs up onto the table in front of him. He sucks in his cheeks and thinks about what else he can do to push Steve’s buttons tonight. He’s had a long day. He deserves a little bit of fun.

To his surprise, it’s Steve who replies again, this time with a photo attachment in the text. It’s a picture of him standing in front of a semi-fogged up bathroom mirror, completely naked with a couple of scars on his chest that look like they’re a result of swords of some type. His face is obscured by the phone but Tony sees his wet hair flopping over his face in the reflection.

Oh, there’s also that one detail of him being completely hard, too.

 

**Looks like the other guy put up a fight. In need of a little R &R there, Cap?**

_I do miss the doctors we had on-call, but I’ll be fine._

**Price you pay for quitting a life with me.**

_You’re hardly agonizing over me, or are you?_

_I never opened the voicemail you sent when you were drunk on New Years, btw. I regret deleting it now._

**Next time you wonder where your values are gonna get you, case in point.**

_You’re still impossible to talk to._

**And you’re still a self-righteous asshole < if you’re ever at a loss of what your next superhero name should be.**

**Heard it through the grapevine that it’s ‘Nomad’ now. That’s dumb af (as fuck)**

_I need a medic. Maybe they’ll tell me what’s been messing with my brain to the point where I think it’s still worth talking to you these days._

**Ouch. Did Nat type that one out for you?**

**(Btw, tell Nat I said hi)**

_She says hi, too._

**Has she been standing in your bathroom this entire time?**

Tony regrets not waiting for another hot minute there to type out a reply that was, well, less blatantly dripping in jealousy. Shit. He’s always like this when it comes to Steve. Always.

 

_No, I just forwarded the text. She replied._

 

Steve forwards Natasha’s text to Tony, for proof. Tony smiles and manages to breathe again.

 

_I’m not in the bathroom anymore, btw. I’m in bed, so we should call it a night._

**You taken care of yourself yet?**

_Not yet._

**What are you waiting for?**

It’s quiet for a couple of minutes, but Tony refuses to give in to the double-text this time. He just sits there, pushing things around on his workstation with his brain only half-concentrating on the tools in front of him. He suddenly gets a voicemail notification from Steve, which startles him more than it should. He holds the phone close to his ear and leans over on the table to listen to it.

 

_Hey, Tony. I miss you. I’m not calling because I’m not planning on waiting for you to say it back. I know it’s hard to make you trust me sometimes ‘cause, well, you know why. I don’t know what we’ve been doing here—this whole dance, back and forth, like nothing’s happened while constantly reminding each other that there is nothing left in it for us._

_I know there was a time when you needed a lot more from me than I could give you. Contrary to what you might think, I’m not so far up my own ass that I can’t see that you don’t need any of that anymore, or any of me. I still care about you, though, Tony. I wish I could hear your voice._

_I wish I could—never mind. I’m not going to keep trying to discuss politics with you. We both know it never ends well. I know you’ll believe this, though, when I say that I wish I could touch you again. I wish it were you—touching me right now._

 

Tony hears the faint sounds of Steve’s breaths panting in the empty room, the tightness in his throat when he groans, the wet sounds of him pumping himself dry until he repeats Tony’s name, over and over again with hushed whispers until the recording drops and clicks to an end.

Bastard.

He misses him so fucking much.

 

-

 

It doesn’t actually sink in, that Tony’s going home, after being stranded in space for nearly a month and feeling like he’s hanging over the brink of death, an endless river that’s been waiting to carry him for as long as he can remember. It’s put his life in perspective, really—sure, he’s been staring at his own reflection in the waters ever since Afghanistan, but he really felt his toes dipping in this time—and he wants to make things right before the day really comes where he gets baptized by the waters of the afterlife. Throughout his withering days in that space ship, seeing the universe being wiped away before his eyes, there has been one constant that has been leaving flickers of light in his mind even when it’s slowly dulling day after day.

Steve clutches onto him like he’s the first ray of the sun he’s ever been hit with after sleeping on the ice. Tony’s weak, he’s tired and he’s ready to rest, but he makes sure to keep his eyes open long enough to really look at Steve. Steve, who has a beard and looks worse for wear after all that time apart, dark circles under his eyes and scars on his cheek presumably after the fight they had with Thanos. Steve, who is an eternity away from the person he used to be, and yet still chooses to stay magnetized to Tony, chooses to circle around his orbit and presses their lips together like it’s the very first time again.

It’s soft and careful, and Tony’s still cold from all that time spent in space.

“I’m sorry,” Steve whimpers as their lips break away. Tony notices it quivering, tears streaming down his face and his beard. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you needed me.”

Tony shakes his head, feeling a little faint all of a sudden. “No,” he says, laying a hand on Steve’s cheek. “Steve, no. I’m sorry. I don’t know—we lost up there, against Thanos. I didn’t know what to do.”

“We’ll figure it out, I promise,” Steve says in the most reassuring voice Tony’s ever heard. He supports Tony’s back as he collapses backwards and pushes him forward so that his head is resting on the crook of Steve’s neck. He pats him gently on the back in gentle, soothing strokes. “Hey, it’s okay. I’ll carry you back inside, just stay with me Tony.”

“Mmhm,” Tony hums, before falling asleep for the next couple of days.

He wakes up in his own bed, with an IV tube attached to his wrist and Steve Rogers sitting across the room reading on the tablet. He tries to sit upright and ends up yanking on his IV, hissing at the sharp jerk in his arm.

“Tony,” Steve looks up and drops the tablet on the table. He bolts towards him, pressing him back down on the bed. “Careful with that. How are you feeling?”

“Like it’s the end of the world.”

“It is.”

“But we’re still here, right?” Tony says, extending an arm out. Steve looks surprised but takes it without hesitation. “Tried to put ourselves on opposite sides of a rift, but when the whole universe split in half we’re back to where we started.”

“Yeah, we are.”

“I guess not even a grand suicide mission to space could keep me away from you,” Tony says and tries to smile for Steve, who isn’t looking amused by any of this. “Death foiled again. Maybe this is it; I should just stop trying.”

Steve’s still looking at him with that disapproving look that Tony’s missed so much.

“You used to laugh at my jokes.”

“You used to joke about less morbid things.”

“No, I didn’t—it’s just never felt as real as it does now.”

Steve shoots him a stern look. “Nobody’s dying, not anymore. We’re working on a plan to undo all of this.”

Tony takes in the sight of Steve, wearing dark clothes, with his dark hair and dark beard, all shadows when the memory of him is always filled with light. Hot, searing light that cuts through the bone, like on that afternoon when they were making love on the sofa right before the first meeting about the Accords. Now he’s wearing cooler, more subdued colours. It makes Tony relax around him more, somehow. They’re no longer fanning the flames of their differences around each other—they’re just seeking common ground when the whole world is breaking apart.

“I don't know if it's possible, Steve.”

“You were never one to turn a blind eye against an impossible challenge.”

“You were never one to beg,” Tony says, seeing the sad reflection in Steve's eyes. Truth is, Tony doesn't exactly know what to do in the coming days. They've lost, massively, and somehow the universe spared them the other. For the first time in a long time, Tony feels like they've finally reached a type of calm stability; like they've weathered the storm and now the two of them are just floating on a tiny boat in a tranquil lake, peaceful and unbothered by outside forces. 

“Fine, I'll listen. But if it doesn’t work, promise me you’ll stay by my side.”

He strokes the length of Steve’s arm with all the strength left in him. Steve leans over and brushes his hand through his hair, softly thumbing his temple—there it is, the comforting stability of being under Steve's hand. He's missed this, all of it. 

“I promise. You're the one who makes saving the world worth it. How could I ever live in it without you?”

“You’ve always been so dramatic.”

“You’ve always given me the space to tell you what I feel even if it’s ugly, even when you disagreed. I could've lived my whole life driven by my own beliefs—tunnel vision, as you called it, but letting you in changed me in ways I could've never even imagined. But you never even set out to do that, it just happened as a result of us bleeding into each other over the years. Sometimes it was painful wearing those open wounds around you, although you probably felt the same way about me. In the end, though, being without you felt like I was bleeding myself dry with nothing else feeding back into me. I could feel myself turning cold like I was losing the best parts of me that made me who I was when I was with you. I don't just want to be me when I'm around you, Tony, I want to be yours.”

“Kiss me, baby, I’ve missed you,” Tony says, desperately.

Steve immediately dives down to kiss him, lips interlocking in a wordless conversation with each other. It's clear, when they break apart again, that there's a sadness in both of their eyes—for everything and everyone they've lost.

“I am proud of you, Steve, for keeping everyone together while I was away. I know I should’ve called earlier, but I missed that window and next thing I knew I was on an alien spaceship trying to send you voicemails that wouldn’t go through—”

“Tony, you didn’t do anything wrong. We both should’ve made steps to reconnect earlier, but this is our second chance.”

“How are they all doing?”

“Honestly? It’s been rough, but all of us are starting to realize that we’re all we’ve got moving forward. It’s not an easy road to rebuild, but we’ll get there.”

“We’ve been pretty good at building a family over the years, so long as we stay together. Hey, look at me, sweetheart. You are, okay? Mine. If you want to be, and I... will always want you to be.”

“Yeah,” Steve finally smiles and ducks down for another kiss, this time as Tony pulls him down by the shirt. “Don’t make me lose you again, Stark.”

“Well, leave a mark on me so that I never get lost, Captain,” Tony replies.

He basks in Steve’s warmth and the familiar comfort of his scent, with the unfamiliar beard brushing against the crook of his neck as a reminder that as much as things will change, the one constant in this world that Tony count on is that it gives him a certain type of strength, when the two of them are together, that can’t be found or replicated anywhere else, or with anyone else.

They might lose the fight, again and again, but they're going to make damn sure that they’re not going to lose each other this time.

 

**Author's Note:**

> edit 5/5/19: expanded n edited some of the dialogue in the very last section, in case anyone is re-reading and became confused sjkfh I am just constantly yearning for more drama and this is the final version now


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